


Raiders of the Tossed Mark: Being the Nineteenth Tale of the Coin, the Sword, and the Medallion

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: The Medallion [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, That would be telling - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-20 10:14:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16553876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC





	1. Scowrers Scouring

It isn’t often that you get to see cavalry utterly routed by infantry when the infantry is attacking, but the Scowrers sure were doing a number on the centaurs. Of course, the battle was taking place within a pretty tightly packed city, so the centaurs couldn’t work up to a charge or use hit-and-run tactics effectively.

I wondered why the centaurs weren’t using their gunpowder-rocket-powered gliders on the Scowrers as they had on the giants during the war I’d managed to stop (for a change); maybe this bunch didn’t have any. Maybe this bunch had been a trading group caught inside the town when the Scowrers attacked.

I was actually rather surprised that both Scowrers and centaurs were present, as I was on a completely different continent than the one that the Realm Proper was located in; in fact, I was visiting the parts of the Realm that had been established as “second chance colonies” across the ocean from the Realm Proper to see why they had been incommunicado ever since the Awakening. I had taken part in the great voyage of discovery that had seen the colonies established as escort to Cookie and Joey, who would later be revealed as a young version of the First Protector, which hurt my head whenever I thought about it too much.

Most commerce between the Realm Proper and the colonies was by ship; as my errand was urgent, I had come by Tree instead. Though few dared go into that revered place for such a seemingly mundane purpose, the Chamber of the Tree served as a nexus from which you could exit to anywhere else there was a Tree, which was why I had planted an Apple on the plateau above the Miners’ domain. With Alamsta’s blessing, I had used this method of travel rather than spend weeks sailing across the sea. I was expecting to find a prosperous little town that might have decided that they didn’t need to be part of the Realm any more; instead, I had stepped forth from the Chamber of the Tree into a street brawl between the centaurs and the Scowrers.

The fact that they were fighting the Scowrers made me want to aid the centaurs, but I held back because I remembered that the centaurs weren’t particularly clean fighters themselves. The question became academic in another moment, anyway: a bunch of guys in flimsy wood-and-paper gliders swooped down and started slaughtering everyone present very effectively, though they steered clear of where I was standing.

These gliders were a lot smaller than the ones the centaurs had used; they were little more than a pair of wings strapped to a backpack, and certainly seemed all wrong for real flight. Of course, the fact that they were dancing through the air quite nimbly put the lie to that, so there must have been more to them than met the eye.

In order to attack the people they were buzz-bombing, the guys in the gliders were using some kind of projectile weapon (mounted on the backpack above the wing where I couldn’t get a good look at it) that fired what looked to me like ten-penny nails; the reports weren’t loud enough for their gun-things to be using gunpowder as a propellant, though, so I couldn’t be sure just how they worked.

I got a good, close-up view of what they did to their targets, though, and I really wish I hadn’t. One of the gliders swooped down and turned the centaurs and Scowrers nearest me into supremely gory pincushions. I could hear the pilot laughing maniacally as he did so.

As the glider banked upwards, I got a very full and clear view of the pilot’s face. I was so stunned that all I could do was stand there gaping like an idiot as the glider did a loop-the-loop and sped away.

The face looking back at me from the glider had been my own…

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. Alter Idem

After the glider guys had all flown away, I searched through the town, but I didn’t find anyone still alive; the guys in the gliders had finished off anybody the centaurs and the Scowrers had missed. I kept getting distracted in my search by thoughts of the glider guy I’d seen who had my face. Had I been seeing things? If not, who was he? Was he a relative of mine here in the world of the Realm, as Dark Alamsta had been a distant aunt-cestor of my Alamsta?

None of these questions were helping me find the glider guys, who were clearly from out of town. To find them, I’d almost certainly need to be able to cover a lot of distance much faster than I could walk, though there weren’t any horses or other domesticated animals around, either.

In my explorations, I found a few serviceable bicycles not too dissimilar from those I’d used as my main mode of getting places when I was a kid. On a hunch, I mounted one and found that it was, indeed, really easy to pick up riding a bike again, even after maybe seven years.

I had to make my way to the town gates pretty carefully, as I wasn’t quite certain of how sturdy the tires/wheels/whatever they were would prove on the debris-strewn streets, but once I got there, the way out of town was nicely paved and entirely empty. I tried to tell myself that that wasn’t ominous at all, but I wasn’t really buying it. Squaring my shoulders, I set off to try to find the glider guys.

It turned out to be only twenty miles or so of mostly flat going to where the glider guys were based, so it only took me a couple of hours to bike most of the way there; said way was pretty clearly marked by a series of freshly crashed gliders that no one had bothered to clean up yet. I hoped it was “yet”.

I chucked the bike into some convenient foliage, which fortunately was not concealing an ambush predator at the time. I had a bad feeling about the place, which was surrounded by a thicket of strands of barbed wire splayed this way and that at least three feet thick. I certainly didn’t want to lose a way of getting out of Dodge more quickly than they could probably follow me, unless they used the gliders.

I followed the thicket of barbed wire until I reached the gate, where the man wearing my face was waiting for me.

We eyed each other warily without speaking for a few moments. Eventually, he spoke. “So you’re the infamous ‘Young Protector’, eh?” Scorn filled his words, and I could sense that I’d disappointed him somehow.

I kept my cards close to my chest, metaphorically speaking. “Yes, that’s how I’m known in some places, but why ‘infamous’?”

A cruel smile broke across his face like a bleak and joyless dawn. “Come, now. You can’t take out a whole Reaving March by yourself and not expect a little infamy can you?”

That hadn’t been long enough ago for him to have heard of it by any normal means. I filed that away for later consideration and replied, “A Reaving March generally leaves those in its path the choices of kill or be killed; as you see, I’m still alive.” ANd yes, I meant it as a veiled warning.

He obviously understood, because he chuckled sardonically at me. “I’m shaking already.” His sarcasm, while not as cutting as Alamsta’s (a difficult bar to hurdle, I admit), was obvious.

I cocked one eyebrow. “Oh? Are you someone who would need to fear a Protector?”

He astonished me by replying, “As you may have guessed, I’m _you_.”

This day was just getting weirder and weirder…

TO BE CONTINUED


	3. Doppel’s Gang

My double continued speaking. “I’m you as you could have and really should have been: I’m the Boss of this place; everybody around here’s afraid of me, instead of the other way around. You’re obviously too weak to let yourself loose the way you’d need to, so the only person who’ll ever be afraid of you is you. You should change that.”

I spoke. “You misquoted Tolkien there.”

He scoffed. “The passage deserves misquoting.”

I tried one last time. “The passage is comparing one who remained faithful even beyond death to one who betrayed his trust and wound up dead in a dirt road from getting knifed in the back by his last remaining lackey.”

Another guffaw escaped him. “Promises! What are they? And I would be the one doing the knifing.”

I nodded. “So, you are the Assassin, then?”

He nodded back. “First, last, and always.” He signaled to a few others who had approached during our little chat. “But I have a mind to keep you for a while before I gut you like a fish: I’d like you to see just what you’re turning up your nose at when you sneer at me.”

Though the goons were all around me, I stayed still and relaxed. “Nothing you can show me could ever be worth what you have paid, are paying and will pay for it, but I shall allow you to show me.”

Nimble as ballet masters though they might be in their gliders, the thugs were lumbering fools on the ground. Less than three seconds after they started trying to grab me, they were piled up in a confused heap where I had been standing; I myself was a few feet inside the gate. “Shall we go?” I asked my mirror image.

He crossed his arms. “Let me tie your hands first.”

Now I snorted in derision. “Really?” We both knew that would be like blindfolding me with tissue paper.

He didn’t budge. “Appearances matter.”

I sighed and held out my wrists, dodging a few kicks from the idiots behind me without pulling my hands away from his as he strung rough rawhide cords over my wrists.

Once my hands were bound, he led me into their compound, explaining their setup along the way. He was their King and their War Chief and probably everything else of note in his little egomaniac empire; by his own admission, he wasn’t the type who’d allow anyone around him to be even close to his level.

As we walked to the largest building in the compound (which was naturally his), I watched how everyone else acted. Just as he’d said, all the people we met regarded him with fear; some were better at hiding it than others, but it was still definitely there in everyone I saw.

They were all men, though mostly slightly built; I suspected they’d been picked for the build to help the gliders carry them. Most of them were around our age, or a bit younger, which I thought was also purposeful: the way he operated indicated he’d use an advantage in experience just like any other advantage he could get.

He was talking the whole way to the door, a stream of self-aggrandizing boasts delivered in a chummy tone that didn’t fool me for a second. He’d said he was going to kill me in the end, after all, and in that matter I felt I could do him the honor of taking him at his word.

He held the door open for me to go through, shocking the men around us. I almost expected someone to attack me as I crossed the threshold, but what actually transpired utterly bemused me.

I walked through the door, and found myself on a balcony overlooking a great city. Hmmmm. Was the door frame made from wood from one of the Trees? If so, he or his goons had cut down one of the Trees. If not, this meant my double had some serious magic at his disposal.

Neither option boded well for me at the moment…

TO BE CONTINUED


	4. The Kingdom of Krystallnacht

So, the city was the capital of an empire that had just conquered the colonies the Realm had planted on this continent, as the Assassin didn’t believe in second chances. The Assassin had forged the empire personally after seizing control of this city from the ineffectual regime that had ruled it before his advent; this was a little easier than it looks in words on a page, because this one city had a larger population than all those colonies put together.

His advent was a minor mystery: none of the locals really knew where he’d come from, and speculation was highly discouraged (with whips and other such torture devices). A weird notion about it was building in my mind, but I’d need to turn it over in my head a few more times before I acted on it.

One thing I noticed almost immediately was that there were quite a few bunnies around, all acting as slaves. These weren’t normal bunnies, of course: they were the bunnies from the old Bunny Empire that had held the ancestors of the Miners in bondage until I freed them. The bunnies back then had been cruel, and might have deserved being enslaved; these bunnies had done nothing wrong aside from being born bunnies.

I found out over the course of my stay that it was indeed almost tantamount to being a crime to be born a bunny in this place, where all the bunnies who weren’t slaves were penned into ghetto-warrens. There were restrictions on where they could go, what they could do, and even how they could dress (I.e., they couldn’t wear clothes, not that they did).

You see, because the Assassin had to be the one in charge of everything for everyone around him, the society that resulted was a highly stratified one, where each layer had complete control of the one beneath it, and the bunnies were at the rock-bottom; the other layers, though distinct, were actually highly mobile. Sometimes, a higher layer would rise higher or (more usually) sink lower because one of its members had greatly pleased or displeased the Assassin during the course of the day, which made for a constant war between the layers to try to discredit one another to the Assassin.

I was to be the Assassin’s pet for the duration of my stay here, in status barely above a bunny, though the Assassin was the only one allowed to hurt me (unless he chose otherwise). I had mixed feelings about it: on the one hand, I found new reasons to dislike the Assassin and his coterie with each new day; on the other hand, there were some good individuals sprinkled into the various layers of the society, as the Assassin hadn’t gotten around to seriously finding and purging them (they would be types he thought of as weak, don’t you know) yet.

I was able to communicate with the Realm via a weird form of automatic writing using one of the bunnies as a medium; when I did this with one of the coterie around, the bunny was immediately taken out and tortured to death, as the automatic writing completely freaked the Assassin out. I was able to get a message to Alamsta regarding the fate the colonies had met with, though.

Fortunately, the conquest had not resulted in obliteration for most of the colonies, though some had chosen to die rather than submit, and it had only taken place over the last two or three years, so the societal damage done from the Assassin’s system of rule should be transitory rather than permanent or even lingering, though Alamsta would be well advised to ensure this by a pattern of closer contacts between the colonies and the Realm Proper than had heretofore been the case; hopefully, this would not hinder the old “second chance” ethos of the colonies.

What really bothered me, though, was that it was starting to look like my stay here would be a much more extended one than I’d like…

TO BE CONTINUED


	5. A Study in Scarlet Pimpernels

It was when the Assassin was parading me around the city under the guise of letting me see its glory that I met Justiciar Gray, the Detective. Gray was one of those guys who would never be noticed among a crowd: average height, average build, average looks, and an average attitude all combined to make him practically invisible unless he wanted you to see him.

Protectors see everyone, whether or not they want to be seen.

There was something about Gray that caught my eye, though, even from a distance. Looking back, I can tell it was another of those Protectorly intuitions helping me along in what I needed to do; it’s not always so clear at the time.

Anyway, Gray was a Justiciar, which meant he was a mid-level police detective with the authority to apprehend those he caught breaking the laws of the empire. The laws themselves were a bit schizophrenic, actually: for example, the Assassin could kill anyone or have anyone killed that he chose, if he did so openly; if he tried to conceal having someone killed, he would face retribution from the family of his victim, unless the victim was a politician. Any politician could be killed by anyone at any time for any reason, which was why the Assassin had ascended to the top of the heap: he could evade any attack anyone could throw at him and take out the attackers while they were trying it.

Another set of laws concerned the bunnies: while they were slaves, they could free themselves by escaping successfully, but anyone who saw them trying could kill them without consequence. On the other hand, anyone could aid a bunny in escaping if they so desired without legal penalty either. Like I said, these laws were just schizophrenic.

Gray was actually rather infamous for his escapades in freeing groups of bunnies with few to no casualties, partially because he was such a good detective that he was good at both planning and at countering plans, and partially from his success at detection elevating him in the public eye to where few of those trying to stop him were willing to use lethal force against him or his agents. Legal or not, killing the best Justiciar in the city was bound to have negative repercussions for the killer.

All this I learned from the man himself, but not until much later; at the time I first met him, he was just another man in the crowd, albeit one I had the impulse to seek out, which doesn’t happen a lot with me.

Through some rather circuitous means, I was able to get in touch with Gray, inviting him to meet me in the palace if he would on a matter that would be of interest to both of us. The reply I received was guarded but interested, and so we arranged a more or less private meeting, by which I mean the only eavesdroppers were the official and approved ones.

Did I mention how weird their justice system was? We talked about ways the Assassin might be deposed and/or the bunnies liberated while the targets of our plotting listened in, and nobody blinked an eye.

Gray’s unwavering position was that he was interested in justice rather than regime change; if he was satisfied that the Assassin had crossed the bewildering maze of lines badly enough to merit being deposed, Gray would be at the head of the line to remove him, but otherwise Gray was only interested in getting the bunnies away safely and catching criminals.

I asked Gray to think about one thing in the coming days: was Justice in the empire blind? His immediate response was in the affirmative, so my follow-up was: was Justice also deaf?

Gray knew precisely where I was going with this. He replied, “Indeed, Justice cannot see the medals of office or the fancy clothes of the rich and powerful, but Justice can still hear the cry of a woman murdered in the night sometimes.”

Gray left, though I knew we would meet again fairly soon…

TO BE CONTINUED


	6. The Voice of Terror by Night

The bombings had been going on for a week or so already when the Assassin first brought me to his city, and they continued sporadically while I was there. They always happened at night, always targeted places where the bunnies were being treated particularly badly, and always left a number of far-too-obvious clues pointing back at the bunnies.

Why, no, I wasn’t absolutely certain that the bombings were a campaign to whip up anti-bunny sentiment as a prelude to a pogrom or series thereof; why ever would you think that? (Unfortunately, as sarcasm and parody both translate poorly to the written page, I’ll state it here outright: that was sarcasm.)

The weirdest thing about the bombings, however, was that they were always followed by a giant voice with no visible source exclaiming “I have struck again, and none can stop me!” After I arrived, some of the people around me started calling it the Voice of Terror, when they dared to refer to it at all; they were afraid that mentioning it or the bombings at all would call down a bombing on themselves unless they used a serious set of circumlocutions. Given that the Voice of Terror had to have been produced through magic, this was not nearly as insane an idea as it might sound.

The more bombings there were, the louder the grumbling against the bunnies got. It was actually sad to watch such an obvious slander campaign succeeding in spreading its poison through everyone around me, but there was nothing I could do about it—at least for the moment. Besides, at that point, it was still just grumbling, so most people thought that it wouldn’t be necessary to do anything other than stop the bombings. How little they knew what was to come.

It all came to a head when one of the bombings destroyed a building that still had people in it. The response was so sudden and severe that it was as though someone had flipped a switch: an entire warren-ghetto was wiped out that day, and all the rest were sealed shut so the same wouldn’t happen to them. It almost wasn’t safe for a bunny to go out into the streets alone anymore.

Some of the bunnies’ owners were quite willing to see them turned into rabbit stew; some were adamant that no harm should come to their valuable property (slaves); and some actually had a moment of clarity, where they realized that what they had been doing to the bunnies was just wrong. Of course, that last group was the smallest by far, but it was more than ten, so that explained why the city and its empire survived.

The non-slave-holding population mostly sided with the first group of owners, though a sizable minority favored the third as well (most of these being the ones who had already been assisting the bunnies in escaping), but practically none favored the second. It was a vivid example of how having a financial interest in something or someone changed your attitude toward it or them.

Unsurprisingly, Justiciar Gray was everywhere each time a new bombing took place, his every effort fixed on finding and stopping this Voice of Terror; it was generally agreed that only his death or the Voice’s would stop the hunt, but opinion was fifty-fifty on which way it would end. We had not met again since our little “Meet and greet”, or whatever you want to call it, and it looked like he would be far too busy to try another meeting before the Voice of Terror was caught and the bombings brought to an end.

Of course, I already knew who the Voice of Terror was, but I had no way of proving it…

TO BE CONTINUED


	7. High as Haman

I was proud of how calm my voice was when I asked the man who I knew was the Voice of Terror, “Why are you framing the bunnies with the explosions? Why not just have them all killed, if your power is so great?”

The Assassin looked at me for a moment before replying, “How did you know that it’s me?”

I sighed and said, “The symptoms of magic addiction are easy to spot, once you know to look for them. Secondly, you’ve never been surprised in the least by a bombing report. Finally, you’ve never needed to be told just where the bombings took place. I can’t prove it, but I know that it was you.”

The Assassin relaxed slightly, smirking arrogantly as he said, “And even if you could prove it, you wouldn’t take the kind of action you’d need to in order to depose me, because you’re too weak.” The smirk disappeared when I punched him in the gut three times.

A moment later, the two of us were locked in a wrestling match, each trying to subdue the other; I could tell the Assassin was deliberately not going for any of the quick kill moves that I was sure he knew because I’d wounded his pride enough that he wanted to show me that he could bring me down without resorting to them.

As we fought, I asked him again, “Why the deception?”

He grunted at another gut punch, but replied, “Because it was the only way I wouldn’t have to shell out to their owners for killing them, and I just want them all dead and in the pot.”

They say “Pride goeth before a fall”; in this instance, the Assassin’s pride went before a pin. After quite an intense struggle, I managed to get him into a half-nelson and keep him there, despite his attempts to break away.

The Assassin relaxed in seeming surrender. “Is this where I’m supposed to beg you not to kill me?” he mocked before throwing all of his strength into yet another attempt to squirm out of my hold on him.

It didn’t succeed; the Assassin wasn’t going anywhere. “ _I’m_ not going to do anything to you,” I said calmly, still holding him immobile in the half-nelson.

He started to recite one of his cod replies about how that only proved once again how weak I was, but he stopped only a few words in with a very particular type of gasp; it was the kind of gasp you make when you’ve just been stabbed.

Remember how I mentioned that under their weird laws any politician could be killed by anyone at any time for any reason?

Then, “ _I_ have killed you,” Justiciar Gray announced to the Assassin as the life slowly leaked out of the Assassin like air from a punctured balloon. The Assassin stared at the red blotch spreading on his shirt, and then at Gray. The Assassin almost tried to break free again, but before he could, he was dead. I had Gray stab him a few more times, just to be certain. Not that I won’t see him again in some other milieu a few more times.

They say “the bigger they are, they harder they fall”; in this case, since the Assassin had been the top dog but had betrayed the pack, they impaled his body on the terribly high pole that I’d taken for a flagpole directly in front of the palace, a sign to one and all that none were above the law (such as it was).

The only things left for me to sort out were keeping the bunnies safe (and preferably by freeing them), and reclaiming the colonies for the Realm. The solution to these problems proved simple, but elegant…

TO BE CONTINUED


	8. The Festival of Funny Hats

They tried to make Gray their head honcho, but all he wanted was to go back to his old job, so they let him. Some guys have all the luck.

I was… promoted? Demoted? Anyway, after I demonstrated that the only thing keeping me from killing the lot of them was my own forbearance, the new leadership accepted me as the envoy from the Realm Proper, so I got to work laying out the idea I’d come up with to rid them of their bunny problem while restoring the Realm’s colonies on this continent. It took some… creative (one might almost say percussive) diplomacy to get them to go along with it, but they came around in the end.

As I watched the horde of bunnies form up behind me for the trek to the colonies, I pondered the irony: I had led humans from slavery under the bunnies to freedom, and now I was leading bunnies from slavery under the humans to freedom. It was an interesting inversion, to say the least.

The solution I had arranged was that all the bunnies in the empire would go to the Realm’s colonies, and from there, they would go wherever they wished, which I figured would be the remnants of the Bunny Empire in the far south across the desert from the Miners’ domain. The bunnies would have to work for their keep and passage wherever they went, but they would be free to do whatever work they wanted and paid fairly for whatever they did, not owned and ordered around. The colonies were supposed to be “second chances”; taking the bunnies in until they could go back to their empire (or wherever they ended up going) would be their greatest test.

One thing the colonies insisted upon was that they needed to have a representative in the court, which I pointed out had been the case until the Big Sleep (or, technically, the unstoppable Scowrer Reaving March that had rolled over the Realm Proper like a wave of acid and made the Big Sleep necessary) and subsequent Awakening had messed everything up in ways we were still trying to sort out. The bunnies also wanted somebunny representing them before the Throne of Magnatharast, so I wound up with a guy carrying a bunny in tow; because there was something about their names that kept me from pronouncing them correctly, I called them George and Gracie.

Gracie was wearing a funny hat; when I asked her why, she told me that it was a mockery of the Hat of Office that the Assassin had worn. Apparently, the bunnies had decided that they’d celebrate their freedom by wearing these hats once a year, so that they never forgot.

When I got back to the Realm with George and Gracie in tow, there was a new face among the usual courtiers, who looked kind of familiar. I figured out that he must be a representative from the Miners when Alamsta greeted me with a solemn, “Your Majesty,” before bursting into laughter at the sour look I got on my face. Of course, then she had to go and explain her remark to George, whose eyes got really big.

George and Gracie whispered to each other for a few moments before solemnly turning to me and apologizing for any offense they may have given, which set Alamsta off again. I assured them that no offense had been taken and got out of the Throne Room as quickly as I could.

I had been given a temporary set of rooms in the Protectors’ Tower just below the Reliquary, which was essentially unused, as it was rather distant from the parts of the Castle that were in use; I thought the accommodations were plenty good enough for me as they were, but everybody kept mentioning, “when you change quarters” and things like that, so I shrugged and left it to them.

It was interesting how I’d felt like a pet back in the city, whereas here I didn’t; after considering the matter, I decided that a guard dog isn’t a pet _per se_ , so neither was I. Anyway, it was good to be back.

A few days later, I started hearing rumors about yet another Reaving March that was headed at the Realm Proper…

…But that’s part of another story.

THUS ENDS

Raiders of the Tossed Mark

Being the Nineteenth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion

THE STORY CONTINUES WITH

...Nor the Battle to the Strong

Being the Twentieth Tale of the Coin, the Sword and the Medallion


End file.
